Editors' Review

CommonCents from EnDevelopment is a personal financial tool based on the tried-and-true envelope budget system, which traditionally involves putting money for expenses aside in paper envelopes so that you're forced to live on whatever is left over. Such cash-oriented budgets enforce old-school financial discipline, but they have limitations, especially when it comes to record-keeping. CommonCents improves the envelope method with a comprehensive suite of tools for managing everything from cash and credit cards to banking, loans, and mortgages, not to mention complete transaction histories and real-time account and envelope balances.

CommonCents' main interface, My Vault, features a main display divided into four resizable panes. The program's main view and its general approach toward recording and displaying information is an interesting hybrid of spreadsheet and Windows app, with a tree view for navigation plus customizable tables that have the familiar feel and functions of a spreadsheet program, such as Excel. The program is divided into 11 Managers that configure and control not only the Vault but also Account, Envelope, Income, Budget, Backup, Reconciliation, and other features. Clicking each calls up a dialog with checkboxes and other options that simplify setting up your personal information: You just check or uncheck items as needed. There doesn't seem to be anything left out, from Dining to Insurance to Taxes, but you can assign any expense or item you need to. Indeed, we were particularly impressed with the way this program manages to combine the total flexibility of a spreadsheet tool with excellent assistance and ready-made solutions. It had us budgeting in no time flat, and it shows the real appeal of the envelope method.

Nearly everyone can benefit from a good budgeting tool. CommonCents' combination of comprehensive coverage, flexibility, and ease of use with the commonsense envelope method definitely sets it apart from the crowd and earns our recommendation.

Editors' note: This is a review of the full version of CommonCents 3.3.73.520. The trial version is limited to 60 days only.

Used this program for years. I had always backed up the vault. I had a system crash and re-installed the software and when I tried to restore the backed up vault, it gave me an error message. Put in a trouble ticket and got no reply.

I am looking to replace Quicken and attempted to use CommonCents. It is very appealing to the eye and has a clean interface. Envelopes are easy to set up and buttons are all in the right place. But the multiple attempts to import data from Quicken failed. I tried multiple formats. Any progress made was mostly manual. I imported/entered 1.5 months of data but could not get the numbers in all accounts/envelopes to work out. A major show stopped for me was the inability for CommonCents to transfer splits out of my paycheck to multiple savings accounts; CommonCents insisted all items in the split be assigned a category, not a transfer. This isn't real life for me. Sorry to not be able to use this software as it's visual appeal made it pleasant.

I have used envelope style budgeting for many years, and see it as the best way to manage one's finances. Financial management software by big name suppliers (such as Quicken) do not support this approach, so I've used several programs by smaller vendors over the years. I have used CommonCents for about four years now, and am very satisfied. For the majority of my work, entering transactions and tracking account and envelope balances, I find the user interface intuitive and efficient -- easily the best of any other program I have used. It is easy to store and execute common transactions for speed and consistency. Auto-complete features have gotten even better with version 4, and really make the job easy. When I first explored using the program (version 2.0), I had trouble installing it, which proved to be a problem with my computer rather than the software. Nevertheless, the customer support was great and solved the problem. I have had no problems since; the program does what it is supposed to do reliably.

There are web-based alternatives, but you are out of luck whenever the network connection is slow, the server is down, or the provider decides to call it quits (you could lose years of records). I believe you're better off with a program you control on your machine. As an experienced user who has tried several alternatives, I think CommonCents is the best available.

Easy to install, easy to use. It did a good job reporting my expenses and gave a detailed report of where my money was going.

Cons

Had a system crash last month, but save the data to a backup drive. Common Sense could not restore from the backed up data (Data Vault). I was able to get around this by copying the entire vault from a backed up zip drive. I was unable to recover the user key so I used the trial copy and submitted a critical help desk ticket. No reply at all.

Summary

I would not recommend this software. I am transitioning to either Hello Wallet or Quicken.

Hi cman1391: - check your email for a response to your help ticket (you might want to look in your junk mail if you have not set up the proper "allows" as requested). We are sorry you experienced a system crash but it was not our fault. To set the record straight, our support team has never had an instance where we were not able to restore a users backup IF that backup was performed correctly with the built in Backup Manager. We would be happy to work with you if you still need assistance. Lastly - did you actually try 4.3.51.634 or did you submit this review on a previous version?

Version 3.0 of this software was okay, but not great. The user interface was clunky and buggy, variously requiring the use of arrow keys and tab key to modify and move between fields. Screens would automatically scroll to the bottom after data entry, rolling the edited field off the screen. Worst of all was the reporting. All reports were done through generation of a .pdf file. To view the report on screen required the use of the "Preview" button, which showed just that - a preview of a .pdf file. This was on top of the fact that the report options were ridiculous. There was no way to show expense trends or envelope balances over several months. That, to me, is one of the most useful things about an electronic budget record - being able to get a picture of my expenses over different time periods and using different parameters (by bank account, by envelope, by payee, etc.) It was possible to generate a report for any given time period (e.g. a certain month, last 3 months, 3rd quarter of last year), but these reports simply showed every transaction in that time period. So a report of the last 3 months showed dozens of transactions in each envelope, but without any breakdown by month or even a total expenditure for that time period. The report formats were equally frustrating. A "report" would generate a tabular list of expenses that could span 1/2 dozen pages. This is not a convenient way to visualize expenses and get an understanding of where my money goes. A "graph" would create a pie chart and a legend. Given that I have 30 or more envelopes, the pie chart tended to repeat or have very similar colors, making it impossible to match the pie color to the color in the chart. Neither the pie nor the legend were ordered by value, so I couldn't even easily determine the envelopes with the highest expenses.

Unfortunately, version 4.0 kept all of those problems but also messed up the manual import capability. When I download transaction data from my banks and try to import it, the "Payee" field is not filled in. Thus, I have to try to categorize my transactions using only the date and amount of the transactions. I don't know who remembers their transactions using only that data. I tried 3 different file download types (.qif, .qfx, and .csv) but none of them worked.

At version 3.0, I would have given this software 3 stars because of its potential. Seeing the "improvements" that have come with the new version, this software no longer has any value for me and does not offer any hope of getting better.

Wasted 45 minutes trying to import data from my financial institutions. Only 2 even appeared to be recognized by the program. The program could not connect with either. I'm not interested in manually entering all this data. Discarded the program and cut my losses at this point.

Aaron here from CommonCents. We apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced. Did you check to see if your institution can even support direct connect? Many only provide web connect - which is specific to Quicken. Also, did you follow your institution's instructions to allow connections to your accounts from external applications? This is frequently the reason that users cannot connect - they need to enable this feature for their accounts at their institution. It isn't a "default" feature for most institutions these days. We were not able to locate a support ticket using your profile. We would be glad to work with you to resolve the issues if you send us a support ticket.

Outstanding customer supportHas all you need in one easy to use bundleIntitutive approach to budgetingEverything on one screen makes learing and use easyAbility to import statements is a definite plus

Cons

I really cannot think of any

Summary

When I originally started Budgeting, I could not find asnything that met my needs, therefore I wound up writing my own under VB.net. When I transistioned to Windows 7, my budget programs would not work, therefore I went in search for another one. I tried YNAB as well as looking at others. YNAB was extremely difficult to use, others lacked the features that I needed. I was beginning to think I one again would be unable to find anything. I come accross CommonCents, and discovered right away that it was what I needed. I have read reviews that says it is difficult to use, I find the oppposite, it is actually extremely EASY to use. Everything you need is right in fron of you. You do not need to go thru multiple menus to get to where you want to go. It has a outstanding import capabiity to allow you to import bank transactions. I had one issue when I was trying it out, and to my amazement I had a reply the next morning! I do not believe I have ever had this kind of response from a software company. It appears to be bug free and oes not appear to be any glitches. All in all, I would strongly recommend this to anyone who wants to get their finances under control. As with any software with the features that CommonCents has, you will need to take time to learn it, but when you do, I believe you will find, as I found, it is really easy to use. It is well worth the $34.95 that you will to pay for it!

Easy set-up and access to all accounts and easy entering of data. Great budgeting using envelopes with continued visualisation of status. Excellent reports which can be tailored and memorised as neccesary. No problems with importing bank transactions.

Excellent tutorials on the Web Site. A searchable help file is very well written and has not let me down.

Cons

Different from all the others and takes a bit of getting used to but it is well worth the effort.

Summary

Microsoft Money won't run under Windows 8 and I have spent a lot of time finding a replacement. CommonCents is the only one which ticks all the boxes.

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